NASA Launches iTech Innovation Program for the Journey to Mars and Beyond
NASA iTech Fosters Technology Needed for Journey to Mars
“NASA is seeking innovative technology for the agency’s future exploration missions in the solar system and beyond, including the Journey to Mars, from other U.S. government agencies, academia, the aerospace industry and the public through the new iTech initiative.”
“NASA’s iTech initiative is a yearlong effort to find innovative ideas through a call for white papers that address challenges that will fill gaps in five critical areas identified by NASA as having a potential impact on future exploration. The technology areas are: radiation protection; life support systems in space; astronaut crew health; in-space propulsion; and the ability to achieve very high-resolution measurements of key greenhouse gases.”
“fill gaps in five critical areas identified by NASA as having a
potential impact on future exploration. The technology areas are:
radiation protection; life support systems in space; astronaut crew
health; in-space propulsion; and the ability to achieve very
high-resolution measurements of key greenhouse gases.”
I don’t really understand why the first four need “innovative ideas”.
Radiation protection is solved by adding the right materials (like water) around a “storm shelter”. Solved by throwing mass at the problem.
Life support is also a solved problem. Worst case, you go “open loop” and carry all the consumables you need (O2, water, and food) and dump the waste overboard (CO2, liquids, and solids). Again, solved by throwing mass at the problem.
The problem of “in-space propulsion” isn’t really a problem at all. NASA loves to research fancy new ways to propel spacecraft using very high ISP engines. But they’re all quite expensive and some require *huge* electrical power sources. Better to throw mass at the problem and just carry more LOX and LH2 along with you. This one might need some consulting with ULA (their Centaur upper stage is still pretty much the gold standard for storing cryogenic liquids).
So, #4 really needs to be changed to: Cryogenic LH2/LOX fuel depots. Once you have this technology, the issue of “in-space propulsion” becomes a matter of delivering enough fuel/oxidizer to where it’s needed. This really needs to be funded as LEO commercial fuel depots.
I’d add one more: Commercial HLV. We have lower cost commercial cargo and commercial crew. But most of the issues NASA wants to solve are done by throwing mass at the problem! But SLS is far too expensive and will fly far too infrequently to solve that probelm. So, get NASA out of the launch vehicle business and let the US commercial aerospace industry solve this one.
Would you feel better if they said, specifically, that they were looking for more efficient solutions to these problems? As you point out, there are solutions already. But the ones you suggest all involve throwing mass at the problem. Low cost launch capabilities, especially heavy lift, might allow that. But I don’t see any problem with researching more mass-efficient alternatives.
The solicitation approach seems to work well when a probe of known size is being sent to a known planet and researchers are asked to propose instruments.
But for broad and realistically long-range R&D goals a consistent, stable program in technology development with in-house, industry and academic partners might be better than issueing a soliticitation to create spacewarp in one year with $250K.
Dozens of teams of starving researchers will spend months preparing proposals, many of which will be quite good, which will be evaluated in great detail by equally large teams of reviewers who will “score” each proposal based on complex and somewhat arbitrary criteria. In the end there will only be enough funding to support one or two proposals, while the total effort issuing the solicitation, writing all the proposals, and evaluating them will be greater than the resources available for the actual research.
Heavy lift is not synonymous with lower launch costs. Falcon Heavy and New Glenn would give us lower launch costs, but neither is considered “heavy lift” by SLS standards. I know which two of the three I’d pick in order to lower launch costs.
Que? FH is meant to loft 50t to LEO, maybe 70t with a better US. NG is expected to be in the 70t to LEO range. And SLS is in the 70t to LEO range.
How is one of those three “heavy lift” and the other two not?
I put “heavy lift” in quotes on purpose.
Just ask any SLS supporter and they’ll quite happily tell you that only SLS can do the job of heavy lift for manned Mars missions. Of course, they’ll ignore FH and NG since they’re both considered “paper rockets”. This is despite the fact that SLS has yet to fly in its earliest form, and will need a few upgrades before it will actually be in the 70t to LEO class.
Gear Ratio
#4 should indeed to changed to ‘depots’ followed by 100s of missions to test the Interplanetary Transporation Systems, ISRU, gather science–more simply: Exploration & Discovery.
Instead, Mars DRM 5 inefficiently threw 1000mT of mass at the problem as a result of the incredibly expendable architecture.
“There is still no significant move within NASA towards reusable spacecraft, or even boosters, while other institutions like the Air Force and DARPA are now pushing rapidly in that direction. Funding for propellant depots is virtually nonexistent, and any refueling efforts are aimed primarily at refueling and servicing existing satellites that were never designed to be refueled. A reference mission is intended to be the best and most realistic design at the moment of release, and a baseline for other future variants of it. However, the mission design’s default philosophy seems to have been to maximize the number of individual expendable vehicles and components, and minimize the amount of redundancy and reusability.”
http://www.thespacereview.c…
“There is still no significant move within NASA towards reusable spacecraft”
Well, duh. NASA is saddled with the Senate Launch System. And like good soldiers they are proceeding with enthusiasm.
Another pretty picture or PowerPoint. Not sure but either way, zero impact on the future.
Cheers
The projected US energy consumption by 2040 (pg 6) for the US fails to meet the 3500M metric tons of carbon goal (pg8). The US and World consume 7B and 30B barrels/yr. Fracking increased US proven reserves ~10X in the last few years from 29B to 264B, and the world has 1.5T left.
A 50 year supply of oil for the World, and projected usage that is in conflict with climate change goals placing tremendous demands on national security interests( land and resources lost, migrations, extreme weather, long term costs, lack of domestic production). OPEC controls 1.2T of the 1.5T.
Oil, Gas, and coal represent over 80% of the US energy usage. To address this related set of national security, energy dependence, and climate change will require the will of the entire country, NASA included. Unfortunately, methane leaks currently erase all the benefits of fracked gas, and it will take 300 years before any climate benefits were achieved…beans? no impact.
http://www.eia.gov/pressroo…
http://www.csmonitor.com/En…
http://www.opec.org/opec_we…
https://www.edf.org/energy/…